FEATURE:
Come Up and Be a Kite
IN THIS PHOTO: An outtake from The Kick Inside’s album cover shoot, showing the metal bar and ropes that were constructed for the shot/PHOTO CREDIT: Jay Myrdal
Inside the Cover of Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside
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I recently…
IN THIS PHOTO: The Japanese cover for The Kick Inside/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
ranked Kate Bush’s album covers. The reason for this is because I feel she gives every cover a distinct image and theme. Everyone has their own opinions on which covers are best. I championed 1982’s The Dreaming as the best. Even though her debut album, The Kick Inside, is my favourite album ever, I am a little more divided on the cover. Some might ask why, then, I would choose to explore it in more detail. I may do a future feature where I explore the different covers for her albums – as there were alternate covers depending on which country an album was released in. I wanted to dive inside the cover for The Kick Inside, as it is a story that really fascinates me. As I love the album so much, I am keen to uncover and interrogate various elements. Before coming to the shoot for The Kick Inside’s (U.K.) cover, it is worth noting that there are some wonderful alternate covers. My favourite, the Japanese cover uses a shot by Gered Mankowitz. The English photographer shot Bush for the Wuthering Heights cover. In the end, his shots and ideas were not used. One of the reasons was that a photo he had taken showed Bush’s nipples. That was circulated and became wider-known. I feel there was an unease in the Bush camp. Maybe that she was being sexualised. Perhaps there were nerves from the record company, EMI. Mankowitz worked with Bush on various shoots. It is his photo that we see as the excellent cover for her second album, Lionheart. It is a shame how things worked out, as the Mankowitz/Wuthering Heights photos are great!
The pink leotard shot from the January 1978 session has been cropped and appears on the Japanese cover alongside pink lettering. I think it is a wonderful cover! For the U.S. cover, there is a Mankowitz shot used. It is Bush is jeans and red boots. Maybe they felt that shot was more wholesome and commercial. I also like the cover for the Canadian release. Even though I prefer other Kate Bush covers, the process of shooting the U.K. cover is interesting. I might explore the stories behind the covers for Lionheart and Hounds of Love. I think, knowing about stuff like album cover shoots, gives us a greater attachment and understanding. Because The Kick Inside is so important to me I wanted to bring in this article from 2018. The Kate Bush News website marked forty years of the album by looking at the cover shoot and getting words from its photographer, Jay Myrdal:
“But apart from my own attachments to the album, today I wanted to publish an article on that very special album cover art, that beautiful thing we all held and relished in our hands back then, in particular. In the UK and many other territories the album’s cover artwork features a photograph of Kate, clinging to a large painted dragon kite, gliding across a vast, all-seeing eye. I am very grateful to the lovely Lisa Oliver for sharing the following with us, an account of that iconic session, written by the photographer, Jay Myrdal. This piece was originally included in a souvenir booklet for a Kate Bush fan event that Lisa organised in recent years. Jay writes:
It must be remembered that when I shot the photographs of Kate for her first album, ‘The Kick Inside’, no one had heard of her before. She was very young and even EMI didn’t expect her first album to be anything more than a minor success. While the record company were confident that she was indeed a considerable talent, they were as surprised as anyone when she topped the charts. I had listened to the tape of Wuthering Heights before the shoot and my recollection was that, while it was interesting, I thought she had a rather shrill voice and I did not expect it to do very well.
Kate arrived at the studio with her father and a car full of bits of wood and painted paper from which he constructed the kite as it appears in the photograph. I rigged the rather fragile kite on the black painted wall of my studio with ropes and a metal bar which was strong enough for her to hang from.
In the meantime Kate was in the back room with a makeup girl being covered in gold body paint. The image was entirely Kate’s idea and Steve Ridgeway, the art director and I simply did more or less as we were told. The idea had come from the Disney animated film ‘Pinocchio’ and the scene when Jiminy Cricket floats past the whale’s eye using his umbrella like a parachute.
The shoot went well of course but I had never been fully briefed on just how it would be used. I had been instructed to shoot it on black which was how it appeared on the single. Used that way, it worked just fine. Unfortunately, when it was composited against the light yellow background of the eye, the dark shadows around her legs and on the bottom of the kite didn’t work for me. In spite of it being probably the most famous record cover I ever shot, I never used it in my portfolio, feeling that this technical problem was an embarrassment to a perfectionist like myself.
Kate returned to my studio a few times after the shoot, once to collect the kite and a few more times just to say hello. Shortly after her record was released I held one of my well known studio parties and invited Kate but sadly by that time she was far too famous and busy to attend although she did send her apologies via the record company… (sigh!) – Jay Myrdal FRPS
The kite theme was continued on the back cover with an illustration of a man on a kite by Del Palmer set against a dusky, grainy sky photographed by John Carder Bush. This illustration would ultimately feature the first appearance of the KT symbol hidden on Kate’s album artwork – a tradition she has continued on every album release to this day. If you look closely you’ll also see that Del included a pictogram of his name, “DEL”, on the kite’s right wing! Del recently posted some of his early concept sketches for this to his official Facebook page dating from September 1977”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Del Palmer’s original concept sketches for his ‘flying man kite’ illustration
I really love the recollections and revelations from Myrdal. It must have been a fascinating shoot full of great moments! Perhaps it has given me a new appreciation for the quality of the cover. One can wonder what it would be like if something more like the Japanese cover (with that Gered Mankowitz image) was used. As it is, the U.K. cover for The Kick Inside is what we have and, as such, it is very important. Maybe we will not see the album re-released with extras and demos (its forty-fifth anniversary is in 2023; maybe EMI will bring something out) - though knowing more about the recording process and things like the album cover shoot are gifts to fans. As I have been thinking of album covers and which ones are best, that brought me back to The Kick Inside. I found that old article and I actually found myself transported in that shoot and imagining what it must have been like seeing the cover come together bit by bit!1 Thanks to Kate Bush News for the article and providing that fascinating Jay Myrdal piece. What a treat to learn more about the process and details of…
A fascinating shoot.